The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c5.s1: Kingship
The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c5.s1
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Kingship
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War is the work of kings turned conquerors or conquerors turned kings. Therefore it was necessary for the medieval monarch to be autocratic, religious minded and one who could conquer, rule and subserve the interest of religion. Such was the idea about the king in medieval times, both in the West and the East.
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The beginnings of the institution of kingship are obscure. Anatole France attempts to trace it in his *Penguin Island*, a readable satire on (British) history and society. That is more or less what he writes: Early in the beginning of civilization, the peoples primary concern was provision of security against depredations of robbers and ravages of wild animals. So they assembled at a place to find a remedy to this problem. They put their heads together and arrived at a consensus. They will raise a team of security guards who will work under the command of a superior. These will be paid from contributions made by the people. As the assembled were still deliberating on the issue, a strong, well-built young man stood up. He declared he would collect the said contributions (later called taxes), and in return provide security. Noticing his physical prowess and threatening demeanour they all nodded their assent. Nobody dared protest. And so the king was born.
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In whatever manner and at whatever time the king was born, he was, in the Middle Ages, personally a strong warrior, adept at horsemanship, often without a peer in strength. He gathered a strong army, collected taxes and contributions and was surrounded by fawning counsellors. They bestowed upon him attributes of divinity, upon his subjects those of devilry, thus making his presence in the world a sort of a benediction necessary for the good of mankind. Once man was declared to be bad and the king full of virtues, there was hardly any difficulty for political philosophy and religion to recommend strict control of the people by the king.
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There were thus monarchs both in the West and the East and in both autocracy reigned supreme. Still in the West they could wrest a Magna Carta from the king as early as in 1215 C.E. and produce thinkers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Montesqueue and Bentham who helped change the concept of kingship in course of time. But in the East, especially in Islam, a rigid, narrow and limited scriptural education could, parrot-like, repeat only one political theory-Man was nasty, brutish and short and must be kept suppressed.
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In the *Siyasat Nama*, Nizm-ul-Mulk Tusi stressed that since the kings were divinely appointed, they must always keep the subjects in such a position that they know their stations and never remove the ring of servitude from their ears.¹ Alberuni, Fakhr-i-Mudabbir, Amir Khusrau, Ziyauddin Barani and Shams Siraj Afif repeat the same idea.² As Fakhr-i-Mudabbir puts it, if there were no kings, men would devour one another.³ Even the liberal Allama Abul Fazl could not think beyond this: If royalty did not exist, the storm of strife would never subside, nor selfish ambition disappear. Mankind (is) under the burden of lawlessness and lust⁴ The glitter of gems and gold in the Taj Mahal or the Peacock Throne, writes Jadunath Sarkar, ought not to blind us to the fact that in Mughal India, man was considered vile;-the mass of the people had no economic liberty, no indefeasible right to justice or personal freedom, when their oppressor was a noble or high official or landowner; political rights were not dreamt of The Government was in effect despotism tempered by revolution or fear of revolution.⁵ Consequently, medieval Muslim political opinion could recommend only repression of man and glorification of king.
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The king was divinely ordained. Abul Fazl says that No dignity is higher in the eyes of God than royalty Royalty is a light emanating from God, and a ray from the sun, the illuminator of the universe.⁶
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Kingship thus became the most general and permanent of institutions of medieval Muslim world. In theory Islam claims to stand for equality of men, in practice it encourages slavery among Muslims and imposes an inferior status on non-Muslim. In theory Islam does not recognize Kingship; in practice Muslims have been the greatest empire builders. Muhammadans themselves were impressed with the concept of power and glamour associated with monarchy. The idea of despotism, of concentration of power, penetrated medieval mind with facility. Obedience to the ruler was advocated as a religious duty. The ruler was to live and also enable people to live according to the Quranic laws.⁷ In public life, the Muslim monarch was enjoined to discharge a host of civil, military and religious duties. The Sultan was enjoined to do justice, to levy taxes according to the Islamic law, and to appoint honest and efficient officers so that the laws of the *Shariat* might be enforced through them.⁸ At times, he was to enact *Zawabits* (regulations) to suit particular situations, but while doing so, he could not transgress the *Shariat* nor alter the Quranic law!⁹ His military duties were to defend Muslim territories, and to keep his army well equipped for conquest and extension of the territories of Islam.¹⁰ The religious duty of a Muslim monarch consisted in helping the indigent and those learned in the Islamic law. He was to prohibit what was not permitted by the Shara. The duty of propagating Islam and carrying on *Jihad* mainly devolved on him.¹¹ *Jihad* was at once an individual and a general religious duty.¹² According to a contemporary *Alim*, if the Sultan was unable to extirpate infidelity, he must at least keep the enemies of God and His Prophet dishonoured and humiliated.¹³ It must be said to his credit that the Muslim Sultan, by and large, worked according to these injunctions, and sometimes achieved commendable success in his exertions in all these spheres.
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As said earlier, there were autocratic monarchs both in the West and the East. Still in the West there appeared a number of liberal political philosophers who helped to change the concept of kingship in course of time. But Muslims could not think on such lines, so that when in England they executed their king after a long Civil War (1641-49), in India Shahjahan, a contemporary of Charles I ruled as an autocrat in a golden age. Even so autocracy took time to go even in Europe and there was no check on the powers of the king in the Middle Ages, except for the institution of feudalism.